Standing on formalities
by Theraxs
Summary: Because a happy ending is one that simply hasn't ended yet...


It was over.

Everything was all over. Years of planning, of waiting, of watching, of growing until they had thought the time was right, only for it to all shatter and fall to the dirt like the sad remnants of a fallen empire. He had been so desperate, so eager to serve her once more- to ensure that no harm came to the only light in his world of shadows. It had been his only thought throughout the entire siege and everything leading up to it.

But in the end, even he had failed her. All of them had failed her, and he worst of all. She had given him but one last job before the bomb detonated and claimed all of their wretched and tortured souls: '_make him watch, and make him suffer.'_

Bruce Wayne. The Dark Knight. **BATMAN**.

The despised traitor to the League and desecrater of Ra's al Ghul's memory and mission. As a gallivanting fool, he had stalled the inevitable rebuttal from his former brethren, given Gotham a few extra years in which to squabble over petty interests and sink further into the hell it had become. What mercy was it to suspend an entire city in its extended death?

But of course, Wayne had believed the innocents outnumbered the corrupt, and thus deserved saving. He fought against the likes of Crane, mobsters, that indescribable lunatic and even the very system he looked to preserve in order to extract some kind of vindication for his misbegotten sense of protectiveness.

And they had waited. The slow knife that pierces the deepest. They had planned their retribution down to the last letter and everything had fallen in place exactly as they had foreseen.

Until Batman conquered the Lazarus Pit.

That lone feat of impossible resolve and resilience spelled the death knell for all that the League had accomplished in several months. His return had rekindled the ember of petulant resistance in the citizens of Gotham, inciting them to revolt at the last possible moment and upturn the balance in several fleeting minutes.

At the time, he had believed that Wayne had only returned due to imbecilic stubbornness; intent upon fighting the only man to have physically bested him. But the animal savagery in their brief conflict had taken him by complete surprise. All of the telling signs of a tired soul from their first encounter were gone, replaced instead by the indications of a trapped animal doing absolutely everything in order to survive, the strength of fear personified.

And the bat had proven to be more desperate than his own willingness to die for their cause. The shock was palpable, as the final kick had slammed him through the glass doors of the stock exchange, sending him sprawling out onto the floor of the marble wrought lobby.

Beaten. Beaten. Beaten. Beaten.

**Beaten.**

How had it come to this? He was Bane! The Bane of humanity's cruelty and suicidal urges. The unchained beast of the League of Shadows. Talia al Ghul's protector. Gotham's Reckoning.

Laid low by a man in a cape.

For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, Bane's pride had taken the brunt of the beating, making his rage towards Batman as personal as it could be. Nothing could take away from the fact that everything he had devoted himself to had been brutally crushed beneath the heel of a shortsighted vigilante.

It was for this reason that he had disobeyed Talia's last order. Dying from the detonation of the impromptu bomb was too merciful for what the so-called 'hero' deserved. He needed to experience the slow crawl into darkness that came as his lungs failed to find any oxygen and his body shut down and effectively killed itself from deprivation. It was the least that he had incurred upon himself.

Vengeance was scant seconds away when the twin cannons boomed, sending the masked assassin flying backwards and a glacial cold pain erupting into his chest. Blood was everywhere he looked, all of it his. A deafening roar swelled inside his ears, drowning out the world around him and leaving only the agony.

It was unlike anything he had ever felt. Not even when his skull had been cracked open by his fellow prisoners all those years ago could compare to this new source of hell. Uncontrollably shaking hands jerked to his front and clumsily probed the damage, the information hampered by the screaming in his mind.

His armored vest had taken the majority of the damage, shattering into burning hot shards that had flown away from him like sparks in a thunderstorm. But multiple sections of the metal plates had caved inwards and were now digging into his flesh, penetrating into his ribcage at varying depths. But the result was the same: flayed open, he was going to die from blood loss, and he could only watch as Batman and the recently arrived Catwoman departed, undoubtedly to pursue Talia and attempt to disarm the unstable reactor.

It was over.

He had failed.

Bruce Wayne would get away and nobody would ever be able to exercise revenge, justice, for what he had done.

Instead of despair, unquenchable rage filled Bane's very being, lending him fleeting strength at the taste of death.

**He** would be the one to avenge all that had fallen today because of Batman's interference. **He** would be the one to truly destroy everything that the hero held so dear. **He** would be the one to kill the Dark Knight once and for all, nothing held back and no lessons to be taught. It was about blood now, and Bruce owed every drop of his, which Bane was intent upon collecting.

With determination bellying his flagging life, Bane reached behind him, the movement causing a fresh wave of agony to wash over him. Groping at his belt, he felt for the right pouch and hastily extracted the contents: two gleaming metal tubes, no thicker than his thumb with rounded caps screwed onto place.

When they had been orchestrating the coup in Africa, a half mad chemist had concocted these for him, telling him that he held a demon inside of himself and no modern medicine could ever help him. But these, these were made only for him, and he had been warned that he should only take them as an absolutely last resort.

The knowledge that the end was only moments away leant a degree of steadiness to Bane's hands as he uncapped the two tubes, revealing short needles, waiting to deliver their payload. If he looked back now, he would lose himself. So, with the rage as his only guide, Bane jabbed the syringes into his neck, feeling the automatic releases hissing as the chemical cocktails was injected into his bloodstream.

The effect was immediate.

Convulsing, a scream managed to push itself up from his tortured body and out through his mask, sounding like the scream of some dark and terrible god. The burning swept away the coldness and seared the insides of his veins, eating away at them like acid. His muscles went rigid as they were hit, locking him in place by his own body. But then they started to shift, morphing around some unknown purpose in the drugs. It felt monstrous to have his tissue moving without his consent and strain against the limits of his flesh.

A surge of acidic fire coursed through every limb and caused everything to spasm uncontrollably. In the contortions, the empty metal tubes fell from his hand and rolled away. Only one stopped in his field of vision, and as he _felt_ his body begin to expand outward while desperately holding onto his unbridled rage towards Batman, the single word stenciled onto the metal surface in faded red ink branded itself into his mind:

_'VENOM'._


End file.
